No, your eyes don’t deceive you — Box is offering 50GBs of free storage inside its cloud for iOS users — just like it did for TouchPad owners back in June. Anyone who downloads the latest version of Box’s app for iPad and iPhone will receive their massive lot for data storage after registering a personal account (existing accounts can join in on the fun as well). To make better use of that extra space, Box will also be bumping upload capacity from 25MB to 100MB per file and baking in AirPlay support. Look, Box is obviously skitching on iCloud’s tail, but it sure seems like a crazy good deal considering that space is yours “forever.” The promotion will last for 50 days, officially starting at 12AM on October 14th — although, we’re already seeing the update on our end. Full details in the source link.

Some Virgin Media customers in Scotland were briefly left without broadband when rats chewed cables

Virgin Media confirmed that some customers in Scotland experienced a broadband service outage earlier this week, after rats were found to have chewed through fibre optic cables.

Speaking to eWEEK Europe, a Virgin Media spokesperson confirmed that its services went offline for a couple of hours on Monday and then again on Tuesday. “Full service was resorted on Tuesday evening and customers are no longer affected,” said the spokesperson.

“We’re aware that a number of customers in the Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes and Leven areas may have experienced intermittent loss of their Virgin Media services from Monday morning until Tuesday evening,” said Virgin Media in a statement.

“The loss of service was due to rodent damage to some underground cabling,” it said. “On Monday morning our engineers were on site as soon as possible and worked at the highest priority to repair the damage, with service restored early evening on Monday.”

However it seems that the pesky rodents were not finished with just one snack upon the ‘tasty’ fibre optic cables, but also opted for dessert the next day.

“Further damage was incurred on Tuesday afternoon and our engineers returned to repair the damage,” said Virgin Media. “We’ve now put additional measures in place to prevent further damage to our cables to avoid further disruption for our customers. We’re extremely sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

It is thought that at least 100 customers were affected by the cable damage caused by the rat attack, which must be an inherent risk when your cabling infrastructure is based in underground ducts.

However it is worth remembering that this Virgin Media outage is nowhere near the scale of the recent outage experienced by thousands of BT customers. A major power failure at a BT exchange in Birmingham was blamed for causing connectivity problems for broadband customers across the UK.

Business Growth

Meanwhile Virgin Media Business has published research that shows that investment in internet technologies does help businesses drive growth – presumably so long as rats arekep ta bay.

The research revealed that over two thirds of British companies believe that advances in technology are vital to the success of their business.

The Virgin Media Business study was compiled after a survey of 5,000 UK businesses. It found that cloud computing and e-Commerce technologies are the most valued, with 32 percent citing cloud computing investments as significantly benefitting their company. This was closely followed by e-Commerce solutions, at 27 percent.

“With more organisations embracing new technologies, the business world is clearly showing it’s open to change,” said Virgin Media Business’ director, corporate sector, Andy Marshall. “New technologies such as cloud computing are helping smaller players to compete on the same stage as massive corporates because of economies of scale.”

Marshall said that computing cloud also helps businesses become far more responsive, besides the usual cost benefits.

“This can help companies to make huge productivity gains, with workers being able to access corporate information on the go, or by working from home, which has been proven to improve morale by addressing employee’s work and life balance,” said Marshall.

When someone asks you what you want for your birthday, take a cue from ChainCrafts ‘ wife and say “a Post-Apocalypse/Zombie Slaying family photo shoot!” Then go make some armor and weapons and hire the super-talented Langley West of Bakan Photography to do a shoot of you and your entire family fending off zombies in a decrepit building.

These are too awesome. ChainCrafts has a Craftster post with some details about the shoot and his handmade armor if you’d like to know more. [ boing boing ]

Solutions to modern problems sometimes can be found in a distinctly classical place. The Magnolia Special was built to recapture the grace and romance of 1930s European roadsters — internal combustion and all — yet it emits 40 percent less CO2 than an equally powerful gas-burning automobile. And it does this using technology as old as internal combustion itself.

The Magnolia Special is the first bespoke, hand-built car built specifically to run on compressed natural gas. If nothing else, it proves eco-friendly need not mean boring.

Like this:

Jamie Lidell is a seriously talented and internationally known musician and producer, but the music he’s able to make using only this iPhone app is crazy. This cannot possibly be real. The subway just got way more fun.

The new iMaschine app for iPhone and iPod Touch just dropped in the app store, and if this newly-released promo video is any indication it’s one of the most functional production apps out there. The app is actually based on the Maschine sequencer hardware/software combination by Native Instruments. That might explain why Jamie Lidell looks like he’s actually pounding away at the pads on a sequencer instead of playing with an app.

The iMaschine app is actually a combination sampler, sequencer, and audio processor. It carries all of the tools you need to improvise and record a bumping beat. Choose from the included package of drum kits, synths, bass, and other sounds, and then lay down a track on the pads. As Lidell shows off, the iPhone microphone can be used to grab samples or to record in real-time. Then you can use the built-in tools to edit the track and tweak the sound.

The music in the video is all recorded in real-time. Lidell makes the sampling, playing, recording, editing workflow look seamless and intuitive. Native Instruments didn’t exactly hire an amateur to show off its app, and Lidell definitely had plenty of hands-on time before he shot the video. But at least we know what’s possible. With a little creativity and practice—that could be you too. iMaschine costs $4.99 and is available now in the app store. [via Gizmodo.com and Native Instruments and Warp Records]